The Many Loves of Marriage

C H A P T E R O N E

Where Love Begins

Picture a classic American town of a simpler era: a white stone courthouse
at its center, Main Street winding its way between awning-clad shops and offices,
row upon row of quaint village lanes overspread with shade trees.

Picture following U.S. Highway 50 up from Sacramento toward Lake Tahoe, curving
through towns like Shingle Springs, El Dorado, and Missouri Flat on your way
into the sun-splashed foothills.

Picture a sleepy community nestled in those hills, girded with apple and
pear orchards, mantled with forests of oak and pine reaching into the hazy blue
of the High Sierras.

Picture Main Street itself, antique lampposts lining the sidewalks, historic
buildings of brick or weathered wood on either side of the street, some dating
from the rough ’n’ ready Gold Rush days of the 1850s.

Picture an iron bell tower at the town’s central square, an American flag
rippling languidly from one of the upper crossbars.

Can you see it all on a hot June afternoon? Can you imagine a sky as clear
and deep and blue as a mountain lake? Can you catch the fragrance of sunwarmed
pines wafting down from the hills? Can you hear the clatter of dusty pickup
trucks dropping off farm kids for an afternoon in town, or the friendly murmur
of sidewalk gossip as neighbors pause to pass the time of day? Now, look up
one of those side streets coming down out of the scruffy, hillside neighborhoods.
Can you spot the young boy in ragged jeans, Keds sneakers, and a faded, striped
T-shirt, flying down the hill on a Stingray bicycle?

That’s me, Thom Kinkade.

And that’s my hometown, Placerville, California.

If you had seen me on such a day, I might well have been heading into town
for my summer haircut at the downtown barbershop. After ten minutes or so (it
doesn’t take long to administer a flattop on a boy’s head if he sits still),
I would emerge with newly exposed ears and a tidy crop of bristly brown hair.The
barber’s vain attempts to create a part in the remaining undergrowth were to
no avail.This would perhaps be the last time a comb would touch my head for
the next month or two.

My barber had decades of experience cutting little boys’ hair. But he was
also a bit of a lush, and if you got your hair trimmed in the afternoon, more
than likely he would have already paid one or more visits to the Round Tent
Saloon, a watering hole dating back to 1849 or so. You could never be
sure what the results of your visit to the barbershop would be. But what did
a bald patch or two matter? Eight-year-old boys are supremely indifferent to
the quality of their haircuts. Of much greater interest was the barber’s prowess
as a storyteller.

This was one of those old-fashioned barbershops where two or three old men
in overalls always seemed to be sitting. Loafers, we called them. They never
seemed to have much of anything to do except sit in the barber chairs chewing
tobacco, leafing through ancient pinup magazines, and telling yarns about recent
fishing trips. The barber himself had an interesting conversational style. No
matter what you were talking about, you always ended up in World War II. It
wouldn’t be long before he would drawl,“Well, back in the war….” And he would
launch into an oft-repeated tale of brave deeds, exotic places, and the antics
and camaraderie of young soldiers far from home.

The shop was a cheerful chaos, littered with candy wrappers, cigarette butts,
old newspapers, and piles of hair that the barber would move around from time
to time with an indifferent nudge from his broom. But the price was right—one
dollar—for a haircut that would last you almost all summer.

Freshly shorn and redolent of Butch Wax, I’d step out onto the hot sidewalk
and hit some of my favorite haunts before heading home. Good old Main Street!
To this day, I can close my eyes and see the signs of local merchants proudly
hung from awnings that provided shade along the sun-baked streets. The Bluebell
Cafe, P&M Market, Raffle’s Hotel, Florence’s Dress Shop, and Mac’s Jumbo,
the local malt shop. At the Hangman’s Tree Saloon (a competitor of the Round
Tent) a cowboy mannequin dangled in effigy from a noose attached to a tree limb
nailed to the front facade.

At Vesuvio’s Pizzeria, you could look through the front window and watch
the guy in the white apron tossing pizza dough high in the air. At Blair Brothers
Lumber Company, east of town, the man behind the counter would give you a free
yardstick. Up the street a couple of blocks, at Chuck’s Frosty, you could get
a soft-serve ice cream cone for a dime.

When my friends and I were doing the rounds, we’d usually start with the
Ben Franklin Five-and-Dime—a real town landmark. The old ladies who ran the
place frowned and harrumphed when my buddies and I came through the door, convinced
we were stealing them blind. Oh, sure. As if we were tempted by all the thimbles,
thread, dress patterns, and sewing implements they had on display! What we came
for was their popcorn machine. For ten cents you could get a two-foot-long bag
of popcorn—every bit as fresh and tasty as you’d get at the Empire Theater next
door for twice the price.

From there, we’d pop into Ed Arayan’s Department Store. They still called
it that, even though old Ed had died some years before, leaving the business
to his widow.What a store! We’d get down on our knees in front of the glass
counters and ogle the strange and fascinating collection of pocket-knives, compasses,
and bizarre musical instruments that the Arayans had assembled. In one display,
there was a whole collection of harmoniphones —long instruments that you blew
into with piano-style keyboards along the side. It always seemed to us that
it would be a cinch to master the instrument—if any of us could have ever afforded
one.

Unlike the Five-and-Dime ladies, Mrs. Arayan didn’t seem to mind the daily
visitation of little boys. When one of us asked to see one of the “genuine pearlhandled”
jackknives, she would roll out a small velvet mat and present the article with
all the sober dignity of a jewelry salesman showing diamonds to a wealthy client.
“Oh, yah,” she would say in her heavy German accent, “fine qual-i-tee.” As a
matter of fact, everything in her whole store was “fine qual-i-tee.”

Another business owner who saw a lot of traffic from the sneaker set was
George, owner of The Newsstand. It probably had another name—the Placerville
News Company or some such thing—but everyone in town just called it The Newsstand.
It was one of those old buildings from the Gold Rush days, with the original,
creaky wood floors and an ancient ceiling fan, spinning away up above. The floorboards
felt wonderfully cool to bare feet that had been dancing across scalding concrete
sidewalks. While you cooled your heels at George’s place, you could check out
the latest comic books and baseball cards—or maybe invest in a jumbo Tootsie
Roll.

Placerville in the fifties and early sixties was a slow, sleepy, safe place
to live. No one worried about kids out on their own, having the run of the town.
There were no malls, no McDonald’s, no cell phones or beepers, no gangs or graffiti.
Commuters from sprawling Sacramento had not yet begun to absorb the town as
a bedroom community. It was still smalltown America, right out of a Norman Rockwell
painting, and was a wonderful place for a boy to explore and roam with his buddies.

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

Nothing too monumental happened in my early years—beyond absorbing the comfortable
rhythms of an old-fashioned American small town. My mother and father parted
ways when I was very young, and my brother, Pat, and I grew up in a single-parent
home. Riding my bike around town on a summer night, or maybe walking home from
school on a dusky winter afternoon, I would always find myself drawn to the
warm glow of windows in the homes I passed. I always tried to imagine what was
going on behind those windows… the laughter, the conversations, the horseplay,
the hearty family meals around dining-room tables.

The windows in my own home were often dark,my mother hard at work (often
until late in the evening) supporting the family. From those very early days
of childhood, I’ve always been drawn in by the buttery yellow light pouring
out of friendly windows and the smoke curling out of a chimney.They’ve become
a hallmark of my paintings.

Maybe that’s why I particularly enjoyed being a paperboy from age eleven
on. Besides the pocket money it afforded, going from street to street, house
to house, yard to yard, was endlessly interesting to me. You could tell a great
deal about people from the way they kept their lawns or gardens, by looking
into an open garage door, or perhaps by the toys lying out in the front yards.
Now and then, you could catch a whiff of dinner cooking: spaghetti at the Wards’,Mrs.
Rossi’s meat loaf and fresh bread—or chocolate chip cookies—at the Reeses’.

But it was a chance encounter on Fairview Drive that would change my life
forever.

The Willeys were new in town, and as I sailed down the road to toss a free
sample onto their porch, I saw a pretty blond-headed girl about my age sitting
on the front step. On that particular day, I decided against firing the folded
paper against the front door with my usual pinpoint accuracy. On that day, the
paper would be hand-delivered.

The girl’s name, I took care to find out, was Nanette.

Nanette: -

Our family had just moved to Placerville. My father had been on an assignment
overseas in the Philippines. It was a hot day, and I was sitting out on the
front steps with one of my favorite books when I suddenly looked up and saw
a gangly teenage boy pulling up in front of our house on his bicycle, delivering
papers.

He smiled, introduced himself as Thom Kinkade, politely handed me the folded
paper, and took off down the street. It was one of those times that you read
about in stories or see in old movies but have difficulty believing.

We fell in love.We truly did. At first sight. Thom was thirteen and I was
twelve. And through the years we’ve always agreed on one thing: From that moment
in front of my house on Fairview Drive, we knew that—somehow, in some inexplicable
way—we were going to be together the rest of our lives.

The very next day we met again. It was a funny incident that did not seem
at all funny to me at the time.

I had planned to walk down to the high school swimming pool with the girl
from next door. Knowing that she was coming by for me at any minute, I donned
my brand-new bikini. When the doorbell rang, I thought it would be fun to show
off a little. I threw open the door with a grand gesture, opened my arms wide,
and shouted,“Ta-daaaa!”

Only it wasn’t my friend.

It was Thom, soliciting for the newspaper. He was standing there with a surprised,
somewhat dazzled expression on his face. Being the mature twelve-year-old that
I was, I screamed and hid behind the door.

I think Thom and I were just enamored with each other in those early days.
As time went on, we saw energy and creativity in one another. Thom was immediately
drawn to our family. Because we’d traveled a great deal and had lived overseas,
we had a number of unique decorations and furnishings around the house—and a
wealth of experiences and interesting tales to tell. Compared to life in provincial
Placerville, we must have seemed glamorous and exotic.

Coming straight from several years in the Philippines, I didn’t dress like
any girl he’d ever seen. All of my clothes had been hand-tailored and embroidered
by Filipino seamstresses (which is about the only way you could get clothes
over there). Thom, romantic even in those early days of preadolescence, was
completely enchanted.

And I, a new girl in town, enjoyed having such a receptive audience for my
stories about where we had lived and the things we had done.

Besides being flattered by Thom’s rapt attention, I was impressed with his
self-confidence and unique outlook on life. Who ever heard of a paperboy who
talked about painters and carried a sketchbook with him on his route? The more
we talked, the more amazed I became at how ambitious and goal oriented he seemed
to be. At the age of thirteen, he already knew what he wanted to do in life.
He knew he wanted to be an artist, and he knew the kind of lifestyle he wanted
to live.

As we jumped and bounced together on our family trampoline in the backyard,
Thom told me he wanted to travel, have adventures, and do things that were out
of the ordinary—or “out of the box,” as he would later explain it.

I had goals, too. I wanted to be a nurse, eventually become a wife and mother,
and devote myself to caring for a family. So we talked a lot about those goals
and dreams. I think that’s how we became such good friends: We talked continually
about everything. As time went on, we really came to understand each other and
communicate on an even deeper level. As we spent hours on the trampoline, on
the front porch, and delivering Thom’s papers in the neighborhood together,
we began to feel like soul mates in our dreams for our futures.

This is all very odd for us to think about now, because we have a twelve-year-old
daughter. She is very mature and responsible and loves the Lord with all her
heart. But Thom and I can’t imagine her having that same vision of a very specific
future the way we did. I think God just put that in our hearts at an early age
because He knew He had a plan for us together.

FIRST DATE

Nanette: -

It makes me smile to recall that as bold and outgoing as Thomas was as a
young teenager, I was the one who asked him on our first date.Not long after
we met, our junior high school had a Sadie Hawkins Day dance, and I invited
the paperboy.

I’d understood that Sadie Hawkins Day is the day when girls get to invite
boys to a dance. What I hadn’t understood is that we were to be “married” at
that dance—as the girls dragged their dates in front of a “country preacher”
(one of our classmates in tails, top hat, and a phony mustache). Now I was embarrassed.
But as we were waiting in line, I was even more aghast when I saw that part
of the mock marriage ceremony involved “kissing the bride”—right there in front
of everyone.

I’d never kissed a boy in my life, and I found myself thinking, Oh, my gosh.
What is Thom going to think? What am I going to do? I was as nervous as could
be.Then Thom looked over at me with a twinkle in his eye and slipped his arm
around my shoulders. In a very cool and debonair voice he leaned toward me and
whispered, “Wanna practice?” Without waiting for my answer, he bent his head
over and kissed me. Right on the lips, too! So our first kiss was right there
in the line.A few minutes later,Thom and I kissed for the second time as the
preacher pronounced us “man and wife.” And that was the end of the kissing for
a good long time!